Google TV

Logitech has begun pushing out the Google TV 2.0 update for the Logitech Revue, adding a refreshed UI, more comprehensive searching and - perhaps most importantly - Android Market access to the set-top box. Arriving as an automatic update, the Revue Android 3.1 update was announced as in the pipeline in late October, and is now finally in the wild, Logitech has confirmed.

Gaming has long been Microsoft's wildcard: while the company struggles to find its feet with Windows Phone, and faces a difficult tablet market when its Windows 8 slates finally appear, the Xbox 360 continues to sell strongly. Now Xbox TV has arrived to not only reassure 360-owning gamers that they made the right console choice, but broaden the 360's appeal to a whole new segment. It's not entirely fashionable to praise Microsoft, especially when it's over something that, buried in the company's history books, they've tried and failed at before. Smart TV has suffered the usual ignominies and from the usual flaws: sluggish hardware, confusing interface, dawdling internet connections. Now, with Xbox LIVE TV, all the pieces seem finally to be coming together.

Lenovo is the latest company to plan a smart TV push, with the Chinese firm announcing it plans to unveil the first "LeTV" - along with a cloud service for shared multimedia - in Q1 2012. The company declined to detail the LeTV technically, the WSJ reports, leaving questions around whether it will be another win for Google TV or instead run a home-grown OS.

YouTube has been stepping up its content offerings to bolster its movie rental service that started about a year ago but has yet to put much pressure on services like Netflix. It added about 3,000 new movies for rent back in May and now it's also getting Disney and Pixar movie titles, 1,000 of which Netflix just lost access to when it failed to renew its deal with Starz.

Samsung has reconfirmed it is working on Google TV products, with the Korean company's TV division chief confirming that the sets would be revealed at an event in 2012. TV department president Yoon Boo-keun revealed the ongoing negotiations this week, Reuters reports, as well as insisting that the Samsung Google TV products would "differ from those of competitors" in an unspecified way.

Just as Google affirmed with their announcement yesterday, their music service is "opening up to a broader audience and that it will integrate with the music store on Android Market to make music discovery, purchase, and sharing easy and fast." Well, the Google Music App has just launched right now for the Google TV, as well as the Android Market now opening up to music purchases to select Android smartphones. So for all you Android and Google TV users out there, feel free to start downloading and listening to your favorite tunes.

LG is readying its first Google TV for launch in January 2012 at CES, insiders claim, as Google prepares its second attempt at the smart TV segment. Specifications for the new LG are unclear, with Bloomberg's pair of sources "with knowledge of the product" only confirming that it will be a TV set with Google TV functionality integrated. It will be one of the first to use Google TV 2.0, which offers third-party apps and a redesigned interface.

Streaming media service Plex has launched a Google TV version, putting its IPTV content on the latest version of Google's smart TV platform. All of the channels from the Android version of Plex are present, and the company says the "vast majority" of content will play, even with Google TV's limited transcoding support.

As promised late last week, Google has begun rolling out its version 2.0 Google TV update to Sony Internet TV devices today. The over-the-air update began showing up this morning for Sony Google TV devices and should roll out to Logitech Revue units soon. The update brings a completely revamped Google TV interface now powered by Android 3.1 Honeycomb.

Google TV 2.0 has launched with support for applications, an improved interface, and a host of other features that most of wished we could have seen in the first version of the software. But at least we have it now. And for those of us who love to be entertained in the living room, it’s something we’ll at least try out.

Google has officially launched its Google TV 2.0 update, promising that those with Sony Google TV hardware should see the upgrade early next week and those with Logitech's Revue "shortly thereafter." The new version, now based on Android 3.1 Honeycomb, brings a simplified interface to the smart TV platform, along with boosted search and YouTube playback, in addition to the long-awaited Android Market access, albeit with some caveats. Meanwhile, Google also says it has new hardware news incoming, including broader chipset support.

New packaging for the Logitech Revue has leaked and it now sports a sticker claiming that the Google TV set-top box now comes with Android 3.1 Honeycomb and Android Market. This along with the recently leaked screenshots of the new interface suggests that the long promised Google TV update should be just around the corner.